January 19, 2012

More about the film a little later but if you are planning to see RED TAILS (2012) d. Anthony Hemingway, consider supporting it this opening weekend. The film cannot begin to represent the incredible history and amazing stories of the Airmen (which I have had the fortune to hear all of my life) but IT IS exciting, action-packed, appropriate for young people and well-acted with an attractive cast! It's clearly a labor of love and deserves an (enthusiastic and critical) audience.

Red Tails Trailer

Above: "Ina The Macon Belle" restored P-51 by Kermit Weeks and Dad and the original, early 1940s

March 21, 2011

I love reading the community pages of The Freeport News when I'm here and this week I was following the dramatically named: National Arts Festival Adjudications. Students from local high schools earned high scores with their performances! The winners gave props to their (usually English) teachers who encouraged and coached them with their thespianism.

I love this image of 17 year old Desiree Joseph who garnered a 97 for her turn in an evocative scene of someone "Waiting In Line".

Mr. Strachan, 16, as an Old Man at a Wedding!

And a 5th grader tells off a bird and scores a 90!

By far my favorite theatrical moment was "documented" in the paper last Monday:

where "actors" Jermaine Gibson

and Ronald Rolle

basically reenact their dispute for the Freeport News camera:

(Perhaps playing together will help to resovle the Jeep issue...)

With all the high scoring local theatrical talent they should rename the island:

November 15, 2009

I suppose I should give AMC's remake of The Prisoner a
slight chance but thus far it only makes me nostalgic for lovely Patrick
McGoohan's No.6, the candy-colored Village, Rover and special guest star No.2s.

Thus far, the remake seems intent on adding sex, narrative
motivation, character psychology and emotions.To me, what is so special about McGoohan's No.6 is that he is
as mysterious as his situation.We
empathize with him and are curious about his predicament but in fact, we don't
know him at all. He has resigned, has a cool car and apartment--he has
information and is standing up to something and someone but what and who? This lack of
information and back-story makes No.6 a character with whom we can easily identify
and allows the show to function as "allegorical" as McGoohan
describes in the clip below:

I think the idea that McGoohan was rebelling against the very medium and genre that he was working within is a major detail that the remake seems to have missed...

September 13, 2009

It's
frustrating because I can't do this right now but I did want to
pursue this thread in Tarentino's film. If the movie depends on
the "inversion" of Jews with Nazis, as Daniel Mendelsohn
proposes, what is suggested by the "Fredrick Zoller" character (played by Daniel Bruhl) who is
compared to the concurrent "Sargent York" in the story? For me, the more
explicit and complicated reference is to the biography and career of
decorated war hero/actor, Audie Murphy. Baby-faced Murphy, of course,
played himself and reenacted his war exploits in his film biography
and went on to act in many movies mostly in the western and war genres.
IB inverts film history proposing that UFA developed a Nazi "Audie
Murphy" several years before Hollywood. I find this reference really
interesting--more so than "Sgt. York"
(a Gary Cooper vehicle I intensely dislike but feel I should
revisit). I also think this lends IB a bit more moral(?) complexity
than I originally perceived. More later I hope...

June 09, 2009

I'm sending out a birthday greeting to my Gemini twin, Cole Porter. I wish all my days would unfold like a Porter tune and that I could be even half as witty in the whole of my work as he is in any given couplet! (here's Bob Hope zipping through "You've got That Thing" number circa 1934)...this is!"High Society (1956) dir.
Charles Walters